Hope offered to assist the Professor to open the case, but was dismissed with an abrupt refusal.
“Though I am glad you are present to see the mummy unpacked,” said Braddock, laboring at the lid of the case, “for if the emeralds are missing, Don Pedro might accuse me of stealing them.”
“Why should the emeralds be missing?” asked Hope quickly.
Braddock shrugged his shoulders.
“Sidney Bolton was killed,” said he in a low voice, “and it was not likely that any one would commit a murder for the sake of this mummy, and then leave it stranded in Mrs. Jasher's garden. I have my doubts about the safety of the emeralds, else I would not have consented to sell the thing back again.”
With this honest speech, the Professor vigorously attacked the lid of the case, and inserted a steel instrument into the cracks to prize up the covering. The lid was closed with wooden pegs in an antique but perfectly safe manner, and apparently had not been opened since the dead Inca had been laid to rest therein hundreds of years ago among the Andean mountains. Don Pedro winced at this desecration of the dead, but, as he had given his consent, there was nothing left to do but to grin and bear it. In a wonderfully short space of time, considering the neatness of the workmanship and the holding power of the wooden pegs, the lid was removed. Then the four on-lookers saw that the mummy had been tampered with. Swathed in green-stained llama wool, it lay rigid in its case. But the swathings had been cut; the hands protruded and the emeralds were gone—torn rudely from the hard grip of the dead.
H2 anchor